A store that exclusively sells goods made by Maryland artists and crafters opened today in College Park, just in time for holiday shopping.

Located at 7401 Baltimore Ave. in the new city hall, Shop Made in MD is a sister store of Shop Made in D.C., which started in 2017, and Shop Made in Virginia, which followed in 2022.

A smaller Shop Made in Maryland outpost sells items out of a colada cafe in Cabin John.

The 2,300-square-foot College Park location features everything from prints from local artists to home goods like mugs, travel bags, candles and jewelry made by more than 120 Maryland residents. It had a soft opening Thursday, with a grand opening planned for Friday.

“We’ve had a lot of students come in today, looking to see what we’re doing,” general manager Darren McNulty told the Hyattsville Wire.

The shop is also home to a cafe with pastries, espresso drinks with coffee from A Toda Madre, kombucha, Yerba mate and selections from Westminster Winery, Sapwood Cellars and Distillery Lane Ciderworks.

Shop Made in Maryland will host regular classes on crafts for amounts ranging from $20 to $150. Along with a regular Wine & Watercolors on Fridays, there are also upcoming classes on things like ornament-making, painting an advent calendar, wreath-making and stitching snowflakes.

The store is holding a soft opening Thursday and a grand opening runs from Friday, Dec. 8, through Sunday, Dec. 10, with a special reception from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday.

Normal store hours will be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

If you’re a Maryland resident interested in having your wares sold at Shop Made in Maryland, you can apply here. Applications are reviewed quarterly.

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A new Aldi grocery store is now open in Berwyn Heights.

Located at 8904 62nd Ave., across from the Beltway Plaza Mall, the latest outpost of the rapidly expanding German discount chain is scheduled to hold its grand opening Thursday, Dec. 7., but shoppers were allowed inside on Wednesday.

“We’re excited to open our first ALDI store in College Park and introduce local customers to a new, more affordable way of shopping,” said Aldi regional vice president Jeff Baehr.

Aldi, which has another store in West Hyattsville, is locked in a tight competition with fellow German grocery chain Lidl, which opened its College Park store a mile away in 2019 and will soon open a new location in Mount Rainier, as both have targeted the East Coast for expansion.

The secret to Aldi’s success is a relentless focus on keeping prices low. Stores are small — an average of 12,000 square feet compared to the 45,000 square feet for a traditional grocery store. You have to pay a quarter to get a shopping cart and bag your own groceries.

The store will give a gift bag and a gift card with an unknown value on it to the first 100 customers as part of its grand opening Thursday and shoppers can enter a raffle through Sunday.

The Berwyn Heights Aldi will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. daily and has curbside pickup and delivery options available.

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Residents of the Route 1 corridor are celebrating the opening of the southern extension of the Rhode Island Avenue Trolley Trail.

Local advocates had long pushed for the crucial segment of the trail because it connects to paths along the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River, which heads towards Montgomery County, and the Northeast Branch, which leads to D.C.

Drivers should take care when going through the intersection of Route 1 and Armentrout Drive, as the rules have changed to accommodate the new bike path. Cars are no longer allowed to make a free right turn from Armentrout onto Rhode Island Avenue.

Here’s an overview of some of the events happening this month celebrating the trail extension’s opening:

• Visit local businesses. A small group of local businesses (see the full map here) such as Maryland Meadworks and Streetcar 82 Brewing Co. are running a promotion sponsored by Maryland Milestones. Through Jan. 6, stop by these local businesses to pick up a punchcard that will get you discounts and a chance to win prizes.

• Bike the trail on Dec. 9. You can join a group of local cyclists on two celebratory rides along the trolley trail from 12:30 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 9. The rides, co-sponsored by Arrow Bicycle and Proteus Bicycles, will gather at Shortcake Bakery and Proteus at 12:30 p.m., and meet in the middle at Denizen’s Brewing Co., at the Station at Riverdale Park.

• Run the trail on Dec. 10. The Runners SoHy group has organized a self-paced three-mile run that includes the new trolley trail extension starting at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 10, at Vigilante Coffee in Hyattsville.

• Go on a Dec. 15 pub crawl. Local businesses are also sponsoring a “pub crawl” on Friday, Dec. 15, starting at 6 p.m. at Pizzeria Paradiso, then 7:15 at Maryland Meadworks, 8:30 p.m. at Streetcar 82 and 9:15 at Sangfroid Distilling. Discounts will be offered if you have the punchcard.

• Join the Dec. 17 Sunday Funday event. Another group of local businesses will be holding a “Sunday Funday” on Sunday, Dec. 17, starting with 11:30 a.m. brunch at Shortcake Bakery, heading to Arrow Bicycle, Shops at SoHy, Three Little Birds and Sweet Pea Fiber and ending at 2:30 p.m. at Franklins. Discounts with punchcard.

The Hyattsville Community Development Corp. is also planning its own celebration of the trail extension for Saturday, Jan. 20.

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The Hyattsville Wire is now on Threads, a new social media network.

And we’ve grown rapidly in just the few days since we started posting, adding followers and gaining likes and shares on our stories.

Social media remains one of the top ways our stories about life on the Route 1 corridor get to readers, helping us grow and expand.

So take a minute today to join us on the social media sites where you are active and be sure to like and share our posts!

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You can also sign up to subscribe to the Hyattsville Wire at the bottom of of any page of the site, just by entering your email, and get news delivered right to your inbox as soon as it posts.

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When European settlers first arrived in the area that is now Bladensburg in colonial times, the Anacostia River was deep enough that ocean-bound ships could dock there.

Over time, those ships changed the nature of the river, however.

Bladensburg’s status as a port city helped make tobacco a lucrative crop in the surrounding area, but poor farming practices led to more and more silt washing downstream, eventually making navigation almost impossible.

In his memoirs, U.S. Attorney General William Wirt, who grew up in Bladensburg, recalled watching a neighbor go fishing during a freshet, or flood, as a young man in the 1780s.

“One of the most surprising and interesting spectacles to me, in those days, was this old man wading up to his waist, during a freshet, and harpooning the sturgeon. It was a whale fishery in miniature,” he wrote.

In 1835, the last large ship left Bladensburg and the river was permanently closed to commercial shipping, and the flooding got even worse, with notable floods in 1933, 1942, and 1954 that covered roads in as much as eight feet of water.

In the mid 1950s, state and federal officials began working on the $11.4 million Anacostia River Flood Control and Navigation Project and navigation project, building levees on both sides of the river and dredging it to a depth of six feet. The project’s completion was celebrated with the opening of the “Prince George’s Marina,” now known as Bladensburg Waterfront Park, where a historical marker lies giving an overview of the flooding from 1741-1954.

In the photo above, taken around 1926, you can also see an advertisement for the Cairo Hotel in D.C., which was built in 1894 in Dupont Circle as “Washington’s first skyscraper.” The construction of the hotel was so unpopular that it led to the passage of a 1910 law restricting the height of D.C. buildings. The Cairo remains the tallest private building in D.C.

The advertisement next to the Cairo Hotel was for the Bartholdi Restaurant on F St. NW, which was located at the center of D.C. at the time.

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A new cafe in Riverdale Park serving breakfast and lunch held its grand opening on Monday, Dec. 4.

Located at 5711 Sarvis Ave., just off Kenilworth Avenue, Sarvis Café is mostly staffed by students from Prince George’s Community College’s culinary arts program to help them gain real-world experience and more easily land jobs in the industry.

The menu includes grab-and-go croissants, bagels and coffee, breakfast standards like an egg sandwich and avocado toast with bacon and salads including beet, Caprese and Cobb for lunch. It also serves a house “Sarvis” zucchini bread made with whipped ricotta, fresh berries, roasted pecans, and local honey.

The cafe is managed by the nonprofit Central Kenilworth Avenue Revitalization Community Development Corporation.

CKAR Executive Director Patricia Hayes-Parker told the Hyattsville Wire that the cafe not only aims to train students, but serve an area that does not have other restaurants or grocery stores while also providing healthy food alternatives.

“It’s really a hub for the community,” she told the Wire.

Sarvis management is also partnering with local farmers to source produce for the cafe’s salads, sandwiches and soups.

The new cafe is the latest in a number of efforts on the Route 1 corridor to reduce the barriers to the dining industry, from making it easier to run a food truck to new ghost kitchens and food halls and training efforts like the new Emma’s Torch, nonprofit cafe run by refugees who are learning the culinary arts.

Sarvis Café hours are 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. It is closed on weekends.

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A popular pinball arcade in the back of Mom’s Organic Market in College Park will close in the coming weeks.

Mom’s founder Scott Nash said the arcade is closing because the strip mall’s owners have found a new tenant, an urgent care center.

The pinball machines and a handful of classic arcade games, which come from Nash’s personal collection, have attracted a crowd of regulars since the store opened in 2018 and were long a rainy-day favorite among parents who live along the Route 1 corridor.

Both groups appreciated the budget-friendly machines, which cost 25 or 50 cents, compared to the usual $1 at other arcades.

The collection includes classic games dating back decades as well as more recent ones tied to franchises like the Avengers and “Lord of the Rings.” (The newer games were popular with little kids because the computer chip inside will often grant a player who wasn’t doing well a few bonus balls.)

Nash told The Washington Post that he’s looking for a new space to house the collection.

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